ANCIENT ROCK INSCRIPTIONS IN OHIO. 545 
burg. These are on a block of limestone, and in the course of the 
twenty-five past years have been nearly destroyed by the hand 
of man. What is left was taken by a tracing of the size of nature. 
On the surface of a quarry of grindstone grit at Independence, 
Cuyahoga County, Ohio, a large inscribed surface was uncovered 
in 1854. Mr. B. Wood, Deacon Bicknell, and other citizens of 
Independence, secured a block about six feet by four, and built it 
into the north wall of a stone church they were then building. Col. 
Whittlesey presented a reduced sketch, one-fourth size of nature, 
taken by Dr. Salisbury and Dr. J. M. Lewis, in 1869, which was 
made perfect by the assistance of a photographer. Some of the 
figures sculptured on this slab are cut an inch to an inch and a 
half in the rock, and they were covered by soil a foot to eighteen 
inches in thickness, on which large trees were growing. Like all 
of the others they were made by a sharp-pointed tool like a pick, 
but as yet no such tool has been found among the relics of the 
mound-builders or of the Indians. The figures are very curious. 
Among them is something like a trident, or fish-spear, a serpent, 
a human hand, and a number of track-like figures, which the peo- 
ple call buffalo-tracks, but Dr. Salisbury regards as a closer repre- 
sentation of a human foot covered by a shoe-pack or moccasin. 
Another figure somewhat resembles the section of a bell with its 
clapper. 
Near the west line of Belmont County, Ohio, Mr. James W. 
Ward, then of Cincinnati, now of New York, in'1859, took a sketch 
of two large isolated sandstone rocks, on which are groups of 
ures similar to those already noticed. Here are the bird-track 
characters, the serpent, the moccasin or buffalo-tracks, and some 
anomalous figures. These are plainly cut, with a pick, into the 
surface of the rock, which, like the Independence stone, is sub- 
stantially imperishable. Here we have also the representation of 
the human foot, and thé foot of a bear. Another figure, which 
appears to be the foot of some animial with four cluinpy toes, 
Professor Cope thinks may be the foretrack of a Menopome. One, 
peculiarity of these sculptured human feet is, a monstrously en- 
larged great-toe joint, even greater than is produced by the modern 
process of shoe-pinching. This has been observed in other ancient 
carvings of the human foot upon the rocks near St. Louis, Mis- 
souri. These feet range in size from seven to fifteen inches in 
length. Of all these representations, the bear’s foot is closest to 
